Fall Goals

It was a whirlwind summer for me personally, and the autumn promises to be just as tumultuous in many regards. I’m starting a new job for the first time in six years; this will be my first job change since I graduated college.

Despite that (and a bit of travel in October), I hope to find time to work on LoreGen this fall — both directly and indirectly.

Here are the four goals I’m setting for myself between now and the throes of winter:

Learn a lot about procedural generation

I dove headfirst into LoreGen without a strong academic background in the algorithms and techniques used in procedural and random generation. I’ve learned some since then, and I have a lot yet to learn. I’m going to do a lot of reading and a lot of investigation of other projects. If anyone has any recommended books, web sites, or sources, please share.

I intend to integrate what I learn into LoreGen, both existing modules and new modules.

Work on the next three modules: Landforms, Flora, and Fauna

I plan to work on the next three modules to expand the content of LoreGen. Next on the to-do list is Landforms, though I might pause on that if I determine I need to learn some more before I design that specific module. The Landforms module will create specific geographic features — e.g., mountain ranges, rivers, deserts, etc. The Flora and Fauna modules, next on the list, will create plant and animal life, respectively.

Write some more tutorials

I’d like to write tutorial articles on this site for the remaining developed modules that are missing articles — Lang and Terrains — before too long. I also have a little bit of work to do to update some of the tutorials related to the WorldGen module since I’ve updated the algorithm for generating continents and regions.

Tinker

I recently learned about the interactive fiction scripting language, Ink, that game dev company Inkle developed when crafting their flagship games, Sorcery and 80 Days. Since ink is open source, and plays nicely with the C# used to code LoreGen, I’d like to fiddle with some sort of ink and LoreGen interactive fiction project.

That’s not the only procedural generation project I want to tinker with: I have a simple, Final Fantasy Tactics-inspired, “narrative-based” RPG engine that I want to expand. And I have some other ideas for how to mess with Ink and interactive storytelling. In short, I want to let my creativity wander (and translate that creativity into some minor projects) to enhance and complement my LoreGen development.

—

So those are my four main goals for this fall. They’re somewhat amorphous, but they give me plenty of room to slowly but surely move forward with LoreGen.